Seminar: Towards Site-Sensitivity

27.2.2025
Centre for Art and Ecology
Goldsmiths University of London

What might site-sensitivity rather than site-specificity mean as a political, ethical and aesthetic commitment? Sensitivity shifts emphasis from the objects or sites of attention to the practices of engagement, to perceptiveness rather than perception, to responsiveness and sensibilities. It encourages sensing the way before any attempts at making sense, so as to safeguard the un-predefined space- time of encounters. Sensing implies figuring out how to request permission, what guidance to look for, who makes meaning and has stories to tell, how the senses of the place can be shared, and what might the impacts of my landing on a site be. It is not up to a human individual alone to determine these specificities and their timelines, means or ends. Rather, site-sensitivity calls for attentiveness to all the human and more-than-human communities, who were already on-site and who will bear the consequences of our actions. It demands acknowledgement that sites also affect us, and when becoming sensitised our practices need to be adjusted and realigned accordingly.

Seminar on site-sensitivity gathers together to reflect on what might this mean in and through practice in the expanded field of contemporary art. It addresses site- sensitivity neither as an alternative to the notion of site-specificity nor as a particular applicable methodology as such, but rather as an emergent approach that can only arise out of processes and practices of entanglement with specific sites. To begin the conversation, curator Taru Elfving and artist Lotta Petronella share their collaborative practices, which are deeply indebted to and informed by the island of Seili in the Baltic Sea, where they have been working for years together with scientists and artists. From this situated perspective Elfving and Petronella continue to address the intricately interwoven ecological and biopolitical histories as they manifest in the present and gesture towards possible futures, across various temporal and geographical scales.

The participants are invited to bring to the seminar experiences and examples on how we might understand site-sensitivity from a range of partial perspectives. The discussion sets out to explore how site-sensitive practices might also hold significant potential in nurturing inter/transdisciplinary collaborations that are urgently required in response to the web of escalating socio-ecological crises. Sitesensitive approaches might even guide us towards undisciplinarity, to critically reflect on how the hierarchical structures of knowledge discipline our practices and encounters.

Towards Site-Sensitivity is organised by the Centre for Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths, University of London in partnership with CAA Contemporary Art Archipelago and it contributes to the development of a future collaborative research project. The seminar is part of the launch activities of the Undisciplinary Institute of Art and Ecology, a new initiative by CAA.